Julie Arnold went for nearly a year in Niagara Falls, New York, without a regular paycheck, but still managed to support her infant daughter and a husband disabled in a car accident. But after moving to Florida, she decided to expand her self-employment into browner fields. Arnold entered the Brevard County market with a pet waste pickup service called the Super Duper Pooper Scooper. With only her Aerostar van, disposable rubber gloves, plastic trash bags and spunk, Arnold began making house calls to poop-challenged customers.

Surprisingly, Arnold's enterprise has plenty of counterparts. According to Matthew Osborn, another poop-oriented entrepreneur who operates the online Dog Waste Removal Service Information pages, over 200 companies nationwide offer pet waste removal services.

"There are three reasons you hire somebody else to do this kind of work," says Osborn. "Number one is the yuck factor. There are some things that people just don't like to do. Number two is they physically can't do it. Maybe they're old or disabled. Number three is time. A lot of my clients were two-income households, professional people who might be working up to 60 hours a week. They've got better things to do than shovel up dog crap."

"I would rather change dirty diapers than clean up (dog poop)," says Gitta Deleo of Titusville, Florida, owner of a 100-pound Labrador retriever. "When I first heard about this, I couldn't believe there was a service like this around here."

Julie Arnold hopes to cash in on the demand for contractual poop scooping, and chances are that she will. Matthew Osborne founded his business in Columbus, Ohio, as a one-man operation. In 1998, after ten years scooping poop, Osborne sold his enterprise for $200,000. When he sold out, he had six employees, five pickup trucks, and 600 clients a week.

For PoopReporters who are interested in starting their own crappy service, Osborne offers his expert advice in "The Professional Pooper Scooper: How to Start Your Own Low Cost, High Profit Dog Waste Removal Service."